Sunday, 30 December 2012

White Christmas

8 foot NEQ2 on the 8 foot table

I decided to call Kate's quilt White Christmas. Here in England our weather is mainly wet so if we wanted a white Christmas we needed to make it ourselves. I loaded the quilt sandwich on the 8 foot New English Quilter 2 frame. You can see the 6 foot Table painted with Blackboard paint and the two foot extension in the regular pale-wood-finish. The extension transforms the 6 foot table to an 8 foot to accommodate the 8 foot NEQ2 frame.This is just the right size for a double bed quilt.

marking the scalloped border

I wanted a scalloped border to give some definition to the top. But I decided to do the marking once the quilt was already loaded on the frame as the frame holds the fabric straight and steady creating a perfect writing surface. I used a ceramic mug lid for a template as it was the perfect size. You can just see the bit of tape I put across to mark the middle. This helped me to align it correctly along the end lines marked on the top of the quilt. I used the wash-away-blue-marker to trace around the template. These became guidelines that were echoed and scalloped to form the border.

machine quilting detail showing the echoed scalloped border

The line design in the middle of the quilt is my take on a pattern that Emily designed with Trudi after a retreat last year. It's fun to see how patterns change when different people quilt them. This design uses a central swirl with a quill and feather shape that is scalloped. It's a wonderful overall pattern because each shape dovetails so easily into the next. We'll be featuring this pattern in our January Retreat coming up soon.

Emily's line design for the central panel scalloping was added to the stitching

central panel quilting detail

My thread choice was the NEW Magnifico from Superior Threads,a creamy white called Elegante #2169

the NEW Magnifico from Superior Threads #2169 Elegante

Magnifico is a beautiful light reflecting tri-lobal polyester with unusual fibre strength which makes it perfect for long arm machine quilting. It's available in 300 colours so it was easy to find a match to the Oakshot fabric I'd chosen for the top. This good match enabled me to create a subtle texture which was the kind of look that Kate wanted in her quilt. We used Bottom Line pre-wounds in Ivory for the bobbins. I hate winding bobbins so I love using the pre-wounds from Superior. With all the shades of white in this project the quilting was lovely!

Juki TL98P on the 8 foot NEQ2 frame with Magnifico from Superior Threads

Finally the layers were quilted using the JUKI TL98P. Notice how, even here at the end of the project, I still have plenty of room for the roll of fabric under the arm of the machine! Emily and I took turns quilting. We wanted to mix up our personal styles. We loaded the quilt on the Friday before Christmas. We took turns quilting on Saturday and finished up on the Sunday. Emily and I were really pleased. This was a project that took us way outside our comfort zones. Now Emily is keen to do it again using a more traditional pattern. Kate was very happy too! She's promised to send pictures of her White Christmas quilt in her Paris flat.

Our Own Table Top Frame

La Mer DVD

Fantastic threads designed for machine quilting

About Me

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, married an English man and raised 6 children in Lincolnshire,UK. I'm keen to make American innovations in machine quilting more readily accessible to the English quilter. I take a folk art approach, helping ordinary people achieve extraordinary results. I've been developing, demonstrating and teaching hand-guided free-motion machine quilting techniques since 2003.